Latest / Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic / 24: You Don’t Have to Be Fully Healed to Be Worthy: A Conversation with Dawn Christensen

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24: You Don’t Have to Be Fully Healed to Be Worthy: A Conversation with Dawn Christensen · Banish the Lies: Outsmart Your Inner Critic

• 0:00
  Tania: hey friends.
• 0:00
  Tania: Today I'm joined by someone whose presence alone feels like an exhale.
• 0:05
  Tania: Dawn Christensen is a certified somatic healing practitioner and former professional dancer and actress, a graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, and the William Esper Conservatory.
• 0:17
  Tania: After surviving a near fatal car accident in 19 and navigating decades of complex chronic illness.
• 0:25
  Tania: Dawn's life took a profound turn.
• 0:28
  Tania: What could have broken her instead, deepened her devotion to embodied safety, creativity, and remembering our inherent worth.
• 0:37
  Tania: She's the creator of the 44 Day Somatic Companion.
• 0:40
  Tania: Your body is the messenger, and her work is grounded, not just in training, but in lived experience and at the heart of everything she teaches is a simple truth.
• 0:50
  Tania: The body is not broken.
• 0:52
  Tania: It is wise.
• 0:54
  Tania: There is so much more to her story than I can capture here.
• 0:57
  Tania: So I've included her full bio and resources in the show notes.
• 1:02
  Tania: Welcome to Banish the Lies, the podcast where we outsmart that sneaky inner critic and get closer to the truth that sets us free.
• 1:14
  Tania: I'm Tania Cervoni, your host and fellow work in Progress here to share real stories and small shifts that help you reclaim what fear and doubt once stole.
• 1:25
  Tania: Let's jump in.
• 1:31
  Tania: So Dawn, welcome to Banish the Lies.
• 1:34
  Tania: I am super excited to have you here.
• 1:36
  Tania: I know that a lot of listeners are going to feel seen and supported in this conversation, so thank you so much for being here.
• 1:45
  Dawn: Well, that is always my intention.
• 1:47
  Dawn: And I'm thrilled to be here.
• 1:49
  Dawn: Thrilled to be here.
• 1:50
  Dawn: I actually just listened to your February 12th episode.
• 1:54
  Dawn: And, what I first of all love, and I've said this to you, before, and it's so freeing, is you say, work in progress.
• 2:06
  Tania: Absolutely.
• 2:08
  Dawn: Work in progress.
• 2:08
  Dawn: And in that episode you're talking about why am I not farther along and our conditioning and our value being linked to what we do in the world and our worth being conditional.
• 2:23
  Dawn: And you really talk about really embracing ourselves in our innate.
• 2:30
  Dawn: Wholeness.
• 2:32
  Dawn: And I loved how you phrased it.
• 2:34
  Dawn: I did take notes.
• 2:35
  Dawn: I don't have them here, but I just wanted to let you know that, that, um, I'm not only a guest.
• 2:42
  Dawn: I'm a fan.
• 2:44
  Tania: Well, thank you.
• 2:45
  Tania: Thank you, and you know what?
• 2:46
  Tania: That's.
• 2:47
  Tania: I think that's a lot about what we're gonna discuss and that segues into, one of the lies that you shared with me.
• 2:56
  Tania: You said that, here it is the belief that you had to be fully healed before you were worthy to serve.
• 3:04
  Tania: I'm curious how that belief has shown up in your life and maybe in the community that you serve.
• 3:16
  Dawn: Yeah, it is one of the belief.
• 3:19
  Dawn: Beliefs that I have held for a very long time growing up, with a very high achieving, pressure to succeed and definitely love my family, but a lot of focus on external value and validation should,
• 3:36
  Tania: Yeah,
• 3:38
  Dawn: and I have always been very clear that our worth is divinely given.
• 3:45
  Dawn: We do not have to earn it
• 3:48
  Tania: you had that understanding very early.
• 3:50
  Dawn: very early, and I really was riling against the idea of, you know, a straight A student and a ballet dancer, and my sisters, you know, there was so much achievement in the colleges and the sta, you know, all these things.
• 4:05
  Dawn: But the, there's was a deep sense in me from very early on that.
• 4:13
  Dawn: There's nothing to prove.
• 4:15
  Dawn: I, I just had this idea and I felt like we're all running.
• 4:20
  Dawn: Like even me, even though I was running like to be like, I'm enough.
• 4:24
  Dawn: Here's my a I'm enough, here's my track, you know, um, times I'm enough.
• 4:30
  Dawn: Here's my solo.
• 4:31
  Dawn: All that stuff.
• 4:32
  Dawn: There was a real clear underneath it, knowing that, wait a minute, wait a minute.
• 4:41
  Dawn: This isn't really true, that we're love no matter what, and I have always had a very strong connection to the divine, to God, to higher power, whatever you wanna say.
• 4:53
  Dawn: I always have had that.
• 4:54
  Dawn: However, there also has been a chord of, and I'm think a lot of people perhaps relate to this.
• 5:06
  Dawn: always felt like, especially because I've always been in the spiritual, wellness, health and creative communities, it's always been my focus.
• 5:17
  Dawn: I have this desire to be authentic, to be transparent, to be, and I'm very, all the books I was reading, all the, the people I was going to listen to.
• 5:33
  Dawn: The way I took it is like, I've gotta be perfect in my spirituality.
• 5:39
  Dawn: Like, who am I?
• 5:41
  Dawn: Who am I to impart my, my journey?
• 5:47
  Dawn: Who am I?
• 5:48
  Dawn: Unless it's, it's seamless that I, if I am not doing things in a totally holistic way, then I am not authentic.
• 5:59
  Dawn: Like, so I put so much pressure on myself.
• 6:03
  Dawn: To be this idea in my head of somebody who is ready to serve this community, like I have to have it all figured out.
• 6:15
  Dawn: But Tania, I'm like, I don't even believe that at all.
• 6:19
  Dawn: I
• 6:20
  Tania: I am laughing because isn't it such a contradiction?
• 6:24
  Tania: So first of all, extraordinary that you carried that wisdom from such a young age, but just hearing you say it, I wanted to laugh out loud because how many of us.
• 6:33
  Tania: Believe that we are made in the image of the divine extensions of the divine, and yet somehow through our little singular independent identity, we need to be perfect.
• 6:45
  Tania: Like that's not somehow inherent in being divine, like that's not enough.
• 6:49
  Tania: So I entirely relate.
• 6:51
  Tania: And hearing someone else say it and mirroring it back is humorous really, because it's.
• 6:55
  Tania: It takes us so far from the truth.
• 6:59
  Tania: So thank you for articulating that so well.
• 7:01
  Tania: I agree.
• 7:02
  Tania: I think a lot of people can relate to that.
• 7:05
  Dawn: And like you said, work in pro.
• 7:07
  Dawn: Like when you say that on your podcast, I told you that that's like an exhale.
• 7:12
  Dawn: I go, oh, it takes the pressure off.
• 7:15
  Dawn: It really does.
• 7:17
  Dawn: It's the permission to be exactly as we are.
• 7:22
  Dawn: No, that's enough.
• 7:25
  Dawn: And perhaps by us doing that, we don't have to have it seamless, imperfect, and everything, you know, which is very performance driven.
• 7:35
  Dawn: Anyway, that's very exhausting.
• 7:37
  Tania: I think the performer identity is possibly the most exhausting identity.
• 7:43
  Tania: Out there.
• 7:44
  Tania: It's like I often feel kind of like we're holding the universe together with duct tape and extraordinary effort and always needing to be one step ahead.
• 7:54
  Tania: And yes, it is a hundred percent exhausting.
• 8:00
  Dawn: It's exhausting and it's requiring taking ourselves outside of to this idea of what we should be rather than really.
• 8:12
  Dawn: Deepening our knowing and trusting that we are enough.
• 8:18
  Dawn: It is that sense of enough of essential worthiness and that really is the through line of my life.
• 8:27
  Dawn: And I went back to what I was beginning to say before, was having a conversation and then this woman asked me and it, she said, well, maybe this sounds kind of morbid, but when you're at the end of your life.
• 8:42
  Dawn: What do you want to have known about your life?
• 8:46
  Dawn: And it came very clearly for me in my own inner discovery and what I want to bring into the world is that sense of enoughness.
• 9:01
  Dawn: Of knowing our worth and of holding space for myself and really knowing that and allowing others to be seen and heard and safe to be Isaiah exactly.
• 9:16
  Dawn: Are that's my seat at the table, that you do not have to earn a seat at the table.
• 9:23
  Dawn: You are enough exactly as you are and being at the table that celebrates and says, come on over.
• 9:31
  Dawn: Sit by me.
• 9:32
  Dawn: I'm so happy you're here.
• 9:33
  Dawn: So I was reflecting on that and I'm like, that is what I want.
• 9:39
  Dawn: People to have felt about my presence in their life and when I come to the end of my life, I want to have really, you know, I've done so much work because I haven't felt enough.
• 9:53
  Tania: Yeah,
• 9:55
  Dawn: I know I'm enough on one hand and then I do the comparison thing.
• 10:00
  Dawn: comparison is the death of joy and you know it, but there's that little pesky thing going.
• 10:06
  Dawn: Hmm.
• 10:09
  Dawn: You're looking outside yourself and saying you should be more like that.
• 10:15
  Dawn: Like more like your sisters, more like whomever, farther, like you said in your podcast should be farther along.
• 10:21
  Dawn: You know, all those things that kind of creep up and negate, or not even negate, but they shroud that real innate knowing I'm enough, there's nothing to prove.
• 10:34
  Dawn: And then from that space.
• 10:36
  Dawn: From that space, what's my next expression in this world?
• 10:44
  Tania: That is so beautiful and such an important gift.
• 10:49
  Tania: I mean, we're constantly scanning the environment for evidence that we belong.
• 10:54
  Tania: So I love that phrase seat at the table because as you say, so many of us are feeling we need to earn that.
• 11:01
  Tania: Um, how do you support people in.
• 11:07
  Tania: Orienting inwards instead of looking to the external environment for evidence that they are enough or that they've performed well, that really, how do we shift that perspective to recognize our own inherent worth, that it isn't something that we earn.
• 11:28
  Dawn: Oh my gosh.
• 11:29
  Dawn: Just even when you hearing you ask that question for me, I am blessed to work.
• 11:37
  Dawn: A lot of the community I work with is those, facing chronic illness or chronic pain and so, so much of.
• 11:47
  Dawn: work I do somatically and with expressive arts is bringing back into the simplicity of being with the breath and being with the body.
• 11:59
  Dawn: Slowing it down, And it's creating that anchor of safety and building from there like that is the root of everything is when we're creating that foundation of safety within us.
• 12:13
  Dawn: And even when you go within and take that breath and go into that inner realm rather than facing outward.
• 12:24
  Tania: Mm-hmm.
• 12:25
  Dawn: Looking outward, right?
• 12:27
  Dawn: You're, you're sourcing from within yourself and really asking From this place, from this place, what am I building?
• 12:38
  Dawn: And as you create that safety, which really asks for it to be slow, just slow down.
• 12:48
  Dawn: And to feel yourself here, the simplicity of feeling your feet on the floor, connection to the earth and in that connection, like I get so juiced up by it because it's like, oh, these feet, the soles of my feet, and it's expanding to the earth.
• 13:11
  Dawn: That is innately always supporting me.
• 13:14
  Dawn: You are supported in this moment.
• 13:19
  Dawn: There's all evidence of how we are supported, and it's again, going back to those simple truth.
• 13:27
  Dawn: My feet are connected.
• 13:29
  Dawn: I am connected to this chair.
• 13:31
  Dawn: This chair is holding me.
• 13:33
  Dawn: I don't need to do anything for this chair to hold me.
• 13:37
  Dawn: Isn't that some evidence that we are innately supported?
• 13:44
  Tania: Absolutely.
• 13:45
  Tania: And.
• 13:45
  Tania: You've been through some tremendous experiences that presumably have forced you to learn this very well to survive.
• 13:56
  Tania: Specifically what I'm talking about is you survived a very, very serious accident.
• 14:01
  Tania: You've faced years of chronic illness, and you were previous to that, a performer yourself.
• 14:08
  Tania: So I'd love to know just.
• 14:11
  Tania: Before we get into the philosophy of the work that you do now that came from this is if you can take us back to when your relationship with your body first shifted and how this awareness of going from the performer to the one who is safe and enough and embodied like a little bit about that journey, I would love to hear.
• 14:35
  Dawn: Hmm.
• 14:36
  Dawn: Well, I have had the blessing to have a vehicle in my body in expression through dance from, I didn't even start at a very young age.
• 14:48
  Dawn: I started in sixth grade, and when I found that world of ballet and movement, I found.
• 14:58
  Dawn: Something I think deep within that I was craving, which was this.
• 15:04
  Dawn: 'cause I've always been such a sensitive, deep feeler and I have now this gorgeous capacity to express everything that is within me through this.
• 15:18
  Dawn: Movement and the storytelling and the music and the stage.
• 15:23
  Dawn: So even though I was a performer in dance, I never really thought of it as performance, which is funny because it was such, um, a homecoming for me.
• 15:34
  Dawn: It gave me for the first time in my life, other than reading, reading has always been my place to go where I get to all this, that I felt from such a young age of like, oh, you know, in words and books and then this, this veal call of expression and dance.
• 15:56
  Dawn: And so that brought me innately into my body.
• 16:00
  Dawn: And interestingly.
• 16:01
  Dawn: For whatever reason, I guess, 'cause my older sister was this prima ballerina.
• 16:08
  Dawn: She's older than me and so much emphasis was on her and it was like all the emphasis and pressure I guess was on her.
• 16:15
  Dawn: And I got to just dance.
• 16:18
  Dawn: And I didn't really even compare myself.
• 16:23
  Dawn: I dance and I was fortunate to dance in New York City and dance in companies and get solos and do all those things, but it wasn't like I'm going to be, I want that.
• 16:34
  Dawn: I was just like, I really felt spirit moves through me through that expression.
• 16:39
  Dawn: It just brought everything I love together and the beauty of it.
• 16:45
  Dawn: And the other worldliness, it takes us from this monkey mind, right?
• 16:51
  Dawn: And all this stuff that's going to the simplicity and the purity and the grace of the movement, right?
• 17:02
  Dawn: And there is choreography and you bring yourself within that choreography.
• 17:07
  Dawn: So that world opened up.
• 17:09
  Dawn: My like inner yes.
• 17:11
  Dawn: Like, yes, this is what I've been waiting for.
• 17:13
  Dawn: So that was a huge gift.
• 17:18
  Dawn: And then when I was 19, I was at American Dance Festival at Duke University and got to study with the most amazing.
• 17:30
  Dawn: Companies in the world, the most amazing teachers had nightly performances of Lar Lvi, Paul Taylor, I mean, just pristine.
• 17:40
  Dawn: And I had a car accident in North Carolina, and it was, near fatal.
• 17:46
  Dawn: It was a devastating car accident, I had near death experience.
• 17:51
  Dawn: My parents were called.
• 17:53
  Dawn: They're in New York and said, your we do not think your daughter is going to make it through the night.
• 17:58
  Dawn: My ribs punctured my lungs.
• 18:02
  Dawn: Just everything broke and fractured.
• 18:04
  Dawn: Just life changing.
• 18:07
  Dawn: Um.
• 18:07
  Dawn: woman came over me praying over me.
• 18:12
  Dawn: Just total, you know, just we were hit by a, woman ran through a red light at an intersection and they hit me directly where I was.
• 18:22
  Dawn: So I had the out of body near just watching my body on the operating table, but not in my body.
• 18:36
  Dawn: And what for me, in this place of the energy of Christ, that's what I felt.
• 18:45
  Dawn: It was Christ.
• 18:46
  Dawn: My knowing was here is I am in the energy of Christ.
• 18:51
  Dawn: Christ is, you know, it's just pure love and light, like just in this place of love and light.
• 18:58
  Dawn: And my grandmother who had died a month before so she was the one who met me and, Watching this body and having that experience at a very young age, you can't, and going back into that body and making a choice.
• 19:15
  Dawn: This work is not done.
• 19:17
  Dawn: This life is not done.
• 19:19
  Dawn: This time in, this body is not done.
• 19:21
  Dawn: But having this experience of total peace, total love, total knowing of.
• 19:29
  Dawn: The truth of who we are, that we are not our bodies, we're not our bodies and interestingly, before that, I've had spiritual experiences my whole life.
• 19:41
  Dawn: Of these kind of awakenings.
• 19:43
  Dawn: Before I was 17, I was very bulimic, very anorexic dancer and just destroying my life with bulimia and went on a happenstance religious retreat that I wasn't supposed to go on.
• 19:59
  Dawn: But I just ended up going with some friends and at that time just.
• 20:04
  Dawn: Really struggling with an eating disorder and thinking I'm bad person because of it.
• 20:12
  Dawn: And there's priest.
• 20:13
  Dawn: And I said, I'm bad, I'm evil.
• 20:15
  Dawn: I can't get control this.
• 20:16
  Dawn: I have all these false ideas.
• 20:17
  Dawn: And the priest says, I forgive you.
• 20:21
  Dawn: You are forgiven.
• 20:22
  Dawn: Christ forgive, but there's nothing to forgive.
• 20:26
  Tania: Hmm.
• 20:27
  Dawn: You, my child are loved.
• 20:30
  Dawn: It was such a grace.
• 20:31
  Dawn: It was just this, oh, like God is love.
• 20:33
  Dawn: God is love.
• 20:33
  Dawn: You are love God.
• 20:34
  Dawn: And then I went into this chapel right after that, and similarly to the experience I had in my car accident, the whole chapel changed.
• 20:44
  Dawn: I was the only one there.
• 20:45
  Dawn: And the whole, it just lit up.
• 20:48
  Dawn: And I had this feeling of the presence of Christ and my whole being was filled with it, and it really lifted my struggles with essentially bulimia and the throwing up.
• 21:06
  Dawn: And it was this spiritual awakening that, that's all I can describe it as.
• 21:10
  Dawn: That's what it was.
• 21:12
  Dawn: It changed me.
• 21:14
  Dawn: It's not even changed me.
• 21:16
  Dawn: It reminded me who I am and where I come from, who we got, who we truly are, and my car accident.
• 21:24
  Dawn: And that experience of seeing this body of this 19-year-old, my face is, and coming back into it with the knowing that this is not, this is not the truth of who we are.
• 21:38
  Dawn: This is a vehicle.
• 21:39
  Dawn: is important while we're here.
• 21:42
  Dawn: It's not the essence, the essential of who we are.
• 21:46
  Dawn: And, uh, then after that, I was immobilized for a very long period of time.
• 21:51
  Dawn: My pelvis was shattered.
• 21:53
  Dawn: My jaw was wired shut.
• 21:55
  Dawn: I couldn't talk and I couldn't move.
• 21:57
  Dawn: I barely could eat, and in the hospital for expenditure time, then I am in the living room laying on a hospital bed, and my sister came home, took care of me.
• 22:11
  Dawn: My middle sister, Robin, she took care of me and I just had time to lay there with my being I couldn't do anything and I was given not just that time, I mean through the recovery period.
• 22:31
  Dawn: I had like operation after I was like 35 operations in total and so many periods of time.
• 22:38
  Dawn: Where there was, where my body just went to stillness 'cause I couldn't move.
• 22:44
  Dawn: And therefore it takes all this extraneous noise out.
• 22:50
  Dawn: There is no hamster wheel.
• 22:53
  Tania: Yeah, no distraction.
• 22:55
  Tania: And that is a state that most of us avoid.
• 22:59
  Tania: And I know you talk about it as not something you would've chosen for yourself, but a, a deep spiritual time.
• 23:07
  Tania: you spoke about another lie about feeling that your body was broken and betraying you.
• 23:15
  Tania: And while most of us have never had to go through something as incredibly difficult as what you're describing, I think it's a very relatable feeling, when anything goes wrong in the body to feel, betrayed.
• 23:28
  Tania: And I wonder.
• 23:31
  Tania: There was this deep spiritual experience, but presumably you're still operating in this three day reality with a society that's measuring certain things.
• 23:40
  Tania: Was that the genesis of that, lie, so to speak?
• 23:44
  Tania: Can you speak to that a little bit more?
• 23:47
  Dawn: Absolutely.
• 23:48
  Dawn: So when I had my car accident and that spiritual experience, I very much knew I'm here for a reason and I, I mean, I literally was like glowing people, like people were like, I just glowed and I was going through all these operations, knowing meaning there was still so, I was so still rooted in purpose.
• 24:10
  Tania: Hmm.
• 24:11
  Dawn: I was so rooted in purpose and it was, can you imagine a 19-year-old girl?
• 24:16
  Dawn: Your face is all ripped up your hands, you can't dance anymore.
• 24:20
  Dawn: But I was rooted in knowing and purpose and felt like I almost felt like cocooned in love.
• 24:29
  Dawn: Like I felt like I was a cocooned in this love and that kept me.
• 24:34
  Dawn: I then I went to NYU.
• 24:37
  Dawn: Because I was like, I can't dance.
• 24:39
  Dawn: I, I auditioned for NYU to the drama program.
• 24:43
  Dawn: I never acted a day in my life.
• 24:45
  Dawn: I was just like, of course I can do this.
• 24:49
  Dawn: I am going to share my soul and my connection and who I am and what a wonderful way to do that through theater and give that voice and connect to others.
• 25:00
  Dawn: So, and that, and of course, I got in and I, and my life through my, I will say Tanya, that I carried that even with all the operations, and then my body broke down and they kept trying to do operations, but if they weren't working, and I lost total function because.
• 25:19
  Dawn: They were trying to get my shoulders in particular back together, but they kept dislocating.
• 25:25
  Dawn: And from the car accident, this was all ripped up.
• 25:29
  Dawn: It looked like a shark attacked me.
• 25:30
  Dawn: And it was just like, oh my God.
• 25:32
  Dawn: So it really like a, um.
• 25:35
  Dawn: Through my twenties.
• 25:37
  Dawn: It took me years to recover.
• 25:39
  Dawn: Then I get to go to NYU.
• 25:40
  Dawn: Then I am acting and I am teaching this.
• 25:44
  Dawn: It's similar to the bar method.
• 25:46
  Dawn: I could teach it.
• 25:48
  Dawn: I can't do this full dance, but I can teach this 'cause it's based in Pilates and yoga and breath work and Alexander and I'm teaching it and I, it's just so.
• 25:59
  Dawn: Ah, I love it.
• 26:01
  Dawn: And then my body breaks down and they're doing these operations 'cause everything's dislocating and the my wonderful.
• 26:09
  Dawn: Angel of a orthopedic surgeon.
• 26:13
  Dawn: He did so many surgeries on me and he's like, I can't help you anymore.
• 26:17
  Dawn: And he sent me to a geneticist and that's where we learned that I have Ellers Danlos during that period of time.
• 26:25
  Dawn: I am still very rooted in, I know who I am, it'll work out.
• 26:31
  Dawn: I am held.
• 26:33
  Dawn: What's next?
• 26:35
  Dawn: This is purpose.
• 26:36
  Dawn: I very much still was there and through that I get led to vocational Educational Service for individuals with disabilities.
• 26:45
  Dawn: This woman.
• 26:47
  Dawn: She, I go into her office, we connect, she approves for me to study a three year program in expressive arts therapy with a concentration in spirituality.
• 27:00
  Dawn: And I was able to do it.
• 27:02
  Dawn: It was in Albany and I went every other weekend.
• 27:05
  Dawn: I was still healing, but I was in this expressive arts world.
• 27:10
  Dawn: So again, I feel like I'm being led, and finally, I find this, through ER's Danlos.
• 27:16
  Dawn: We, go to this osteopath.
• 27:18
  Dawn: He does these shots in my joints, I begin to become more functional before that, my mother had to do everything.
• 27:24
  Dawn: I couldn't lift my arms, I couldn't use them.
• 27:26
  Dawn: So again, periods of stillness, I'm in my late.
• 27:33
  Dawn: Twenties, early thirties when everybody's doing their thing, and I am not.
• 27:38
  Dawn: I am away from life.
• 27:39
  Dawn: My life is for a long period of time, physical therapy and doctors.
• 27:44
  Dawn: During this time, an expressive arts, I get to study that.
• 27:49
  Dawn: I'm so lit up, I go back to the city.
• 27:52
  Dawn: New York City, I am writing for a magazine, CANDU Magazine.
• 27:57
  Dawn: I am their wellness expert.
• 27:59
  Dawn: I'm getting all this body work again.
• 28:01
  Dawn: I feel like this is all divinely written like I am so in this, I am open to receive and I do receive.
• 28:09
  Dawn: I never written a page before and I get this woman come up to me and asks me to write for her Magazine and be her wellness expert.
• 28:20
  Tania: That's such a beautiful story and so validating, to what is available to us in terms of support, in provision when we're willing to receive.
• 28:30
  Tania: And the other word that came to me is trust.
• 28:32
  Tania: Like just trusting that we're exactly where you're meant to be.
• 28:37
  Tania: But the other thing I wanna explore with you that I heard is there's just this continuous theme around creativity.
• 28:44
  Tania: And I would love to know from your experience that when someone is in pain, whether that's physical pain or emotional, mental pain, how does.
• 28:54
  Tania: Creative expression shift our relationship to fear or self-doubt, or those things that could derail us from trust and purpose and feeling safe and worthy.
• 29:08
  Tania: I wonder if you could explore that a bit with me.
• 29:12
  Dawn: Well, I can speak to that for certainly.
• 29:14
  Dawn: I think that the core of.
• 29:15
  Dawn: I am, I, I relate my spirituality to my creativity, and there it is unlimited.
• 29:21
  Dawn: And we are all made up of that.
• 29:24
  Dawn: We forget it and we swallow the lie.
• 29:28
  Dawn: We adopt the false idea that this, they're creative.
• 29:35
  Dawn: I need to be like this.
• 29:36
  Dawn: I am not this, I do not, I mean.
• 29:38
  Dawn: In my life path, that has not been my dialogue because the arts, whether it be literature and words, or dance or drama or expressive arts, and my whole training in expressive arts was about.
• 29:56
  Dawn: You're creating, but it's never about the creation.
• 29:59
  Dawn: It is about the process of your expression within the mode of whatever it be, be it movement of our sculpture or a poem.
• 30:08
  Dawn: In fact, a lot of times we ripped it up like you're not attached to that.
• 30:12
  Dawn: It is not like, look at this picture I made, or look at this poem or look at.
• 30:16
  Dawn: It's not that.
• 30:17
  Dawn: It is.
• 30:18
  Dawn: Look at who I am expressing and remembering and reconnecting within myself.
• 30:23
  Dawn: Within the container of this sculpture or this dance, or this poem, and it lives within us, and it's always lived within me my entire life that I have access to it because I do not see a difference between that and the divine.
• 30:41
  Dawn: And I live with daily pain every single day.
• 30:47
  Dawn: That does not prevent me in any way from being a force of creativity.
• 30:52
  Dawn: Aligning with that unlimited source of creativity.
• 30:57
  Dawn: And in that expression, I remember that even though my body in this aspect here is in pain and there's this.
• 31:07
  Dawn: Reality happening.
• 31:11
  Dawn: I still can access and find solace and expansion in my creativity.
• 31:19
  Dawn: And there is where, so my, perhaps my dance career, I was not able to move forward.
• 31:26
  Dawn: That and my body fell apart in the midst of my acting career and the expressive arts and.
• 31:35
  Dawn: The writing for me is, gives me such peace because I know nothing can take my words away, and there is a vulnerability for me when I move forward in certain things because so often in life I've moved forward and it's been, it's not even taken away.
• 32:00
  Dawn: It's been rerouted because of my health.
• 32:02
  Dawn: so many of the things that I've done, I haven't been able to keep pursuing because of my health.
• 32:12
  Dawn: And I know nothing can take away my words and nothing can take away my voice and my expression.
• 32:20
  Dawn: So there's always a way because I think our spirit is always craving to be seen.
• 32:26
  Dawn: Right, and not playing small in this little container.
• 32:31
  Dawn: Like the, the beautiful thing about creativity is it's so unlimited, it's so vast.
• 32:40
  Dawn: It's as unlimited as the divine because it's the same energy.
• 32:46
  Tania: Yeah.
• 32:47
  Tania: And we spend so much time we can fall in the trap of trying to limit it and define it, and measure, its worth and fall into comparison.
• 32:57
  Tania: And I'm thinking, I'm kind of laughing because I went down this, uh, journey of being so inspired to paint.
• 33:04
  Dawn: Mm-hmm.
• 33:04
  Tania: But I was constantly being stopped by the inner critic who wasn't in the process and the joy of the creativity itself.
• 33:14
  Tania: I was so attached to the outcome and then you don't derive the benefits.
• 33:19
  Tania: And what, what I marvel about your story is 'cause.
• 33:22
  Tania: Had you not been someone so deeply spiritual and rooted in the truth of who you are when you had that accident and all the 35 surgeries and all the things you could have very easily let that define you, and crushed your spirit or somehow been limited in how you thought you could express yourself.
• 33:43
  Tania: And I'm thinking about your 44 day Somatic Companion.
• 33:48
  Tania: Your body is the messenger, which is just this beautiful expression of art and healing.
• 33:56
  Tania: There's such a softness to this.
• 33:58
  Tania: And I guess where I'm going with my question is, in a culture that puts so much emphasis on.
• 34:06
  Tania: Equating worth with productivity or performance.
• 34:11
  Tania: When you're working with others, people who maybe have the strong inner critic and have always defined themselves externally, how do you help soften that very go, go push.
• 34:27
  Tania: Achieve orientation.
• 34:31
  Dawn: It's about finding those places in yourself.
• 34:34
  Dawn: So those are all things we're taught
• 34:36
  Tania: Mm-hmm.
• 34:38
  Dawn: and conditioned, and perhaps you were validated.
• 34:41
  Dawn: Like you said in your podcast about the things that we're, you know, we're the achiever and we're able to do these things and we're validated and as I said, I have been, whether you say grace or uh, just what has occurred that I've spent so much of my adult life.
• 35:01
  Dawn: In places of silence and stillness and being quote unquote on the sidelines.
• 35:09
  Dawn: I still was living my life.
• 35:10
  Dawn: I wasn't the life that is expected or the life that many people are afforded, um, but it's been times of deep contemplation and my need to find meaning and.
• 35:27
  Dawn: Stripping.
• 35:31
  Dawn: It's not even stripping.
• 35:32
  Dawn: I don't think we've gotta do all this stuff to strip these layers and, and there's a lot of ideas of, this is bad.
• 35:43
  Dawn: It's not.
• 35:43
  Dawn: It was a mechanism we adopted to try to survive and try to feel we fit in and we belong.
• 35:53
  Dawn: Because that's an innate desire to belong and feel enough and okay, and what if we shine the lens back within ourselves, shine that light back in that place that knows that truth?
• 36:09
  Dawn: And it may be small, but it's there because it's our truth.
• 36:13
  Dawn: It exists within us.
• 36:17
  Dawn: And what if we begin to give that a voice?
• 36:20
  Dawn: And what if we begin to give that space and how does that wanna express?
• 36:26
  Dawn: And maybe it's just being like, I love any of these just slow movements when we're just.
• 36:35
  Dawn: Swaying back and forth and humming, finding our breath and softening, and just feeling held and nurtured.
• 36:46
  Tania: Um,
• 36:48
  Dawn: nine times out of 10, that softens something in us.
• 36:51
  Dawn: When we invite slowness and we allow ourselves to soften, that begins to melt the layers of armoring.
• 37:04
  Dawn: Ideas and shoulds in our heads about what?
• 37:08
  Dawn: And being in the space of permission to be exactly who we are.
• 37:15
  Dawn: Like you mentioned before when you were painting and you were focusing on the outcome, which is what we're taught to do, right?
• 37:23
  Dawn: But what if we bring back to just the sensuality and the movement of my hand as I take it too?
• 37:32
  Dawn: My pain brush and how does it feel, and what does this color look like?
• 37:37
  Dawn: Like in awe, like a child, like that's how they create.
• 37:43
  Dawn: It's with awe.
• 37:43
  Dawn: It's with wonder like, what does this color look like when I do, and how thick is it and how thin and how does, when I was in expressive arts.
• 37:51
  Dawn: Therapy school.
• 37:53
  Dawn: I couldn't paint.
• 37:54
  Dawn: I had to paint with my feet.
• 37:55
  Dawn: My arms didn't work to paint.
• 37:57
  Dawn: I just moved my feet with the paints on the floor and that was static.
• 38:05
  Dawn: There was never like, what does, is this good?
• 38:08
  Dawn: Is this, what does this look like?
• 38:09
  Dawn: This person over here, I don't care.
• 38:12
  Tania: Yeah, I'm hearing allowing, I'm hearing permission and presence.
• 38:16
  Tania: And also curiosity, right?
• 38:19
  Tania: Curiosity is the opposite, I think, of being attached to a certain outcome.
• 38:24
  Tania: Like you're just with, that attachment, you're already deciding how this needs to look instead of a true discovery process.
• 38:31
  Tania: And.
• 38:32
  Tania: I have to just share with you as you were talking I'm just, recognizing that I could, I could talk forever with you and we probably don't want a two hour podcast.
• 38:43
  Tania: Well, I would want a two hour podcast, people who are listening, right.
• 38:46
  Tania: Not want a two hour podcast.
• 38:47
  Tania: Um, I wanted to ask you, for someone who has a very strong inner critic and a strong performer identity.
• 38:57
  Tania: What would be one gentle way that they can move forward with an increased sense of safety.
• 39:07
  Tania: Is there anything else that you would add to what you've already shared?
• 39:14
  Dawn: One of my favorite truths is, and in my work, it is so much about slow and soft equals safety.
• 39:25
  Tania: Mm-hmm.
• 39:26
  Dawn: So I am very much a proponent of not these elaborate processes and these mystery things and all these things.
• 39:38
  Dawn: The body really knows the way the body is your messenger, and for me, it's naming those anchors that bring us back to ourselves.
• 39:51
  Tania: Hmm.
• 39:52
  Dawn: It could be just your feet.
• 39:54
  Dawn: Rooted into the floor and really not just, oh, my feet are in the floor.
• 39:59
  Dawn: Give yourself the time and the space to feel those feet.
• 40:06
  Dawn: Rooted and held by the Earth, by mother Earth, by Gaia, like really absorb into that feeling of those re roots going down into the earth and the spine lengthening for me.
• 40:21
  Dawn: That's such a lovely luscious practice, or it's so simple as an anchor of hand on heart, belly, soft gaze, not doing anything to the breath.
• 40:35
  Dawn: Just finding it and being with your breath is that your anchor, right?
• 40:43
  Dawn: Your anchor can be your body, like I said, with the hands on the heart or the belly or the feet rooted, or it could be your breath.
• 40:51
  Dawn: Finding that connection to your breath and softening it.
• 40:56
  Dawn: Or it could even be your vision, like finding something that lights you up.
• 41:01
  Dawn: Like it could be a candle or a piece of beautiful artwork or a sculpture and you see it and you soften and it brings you into the, these anchors.
• 41:11
  Dawn: Or it could even be the vision of light coming into the crown of your head.
• 41:17
  Dawn: Feeling that connection to the sky and the anchor of the tailbone rooted to the earth just feel that connection to the earth and to the sky.
• 41:31
  Dawn: How does that lengthen your spine?
• 41:34
  Dawn: What does that do to your breath?
• 41:37
  Dawn: Those simple anchors that bring us into the space.
• 41:41
  Dawn: I'm not trying to soften myself, it just, that's what happens.
• 41:48
  Tania: Yeah, I feel that.
• 41:49
  Tania: And just in your presence as you're describing it, it's like my whole nervous system just calmed down.
• 41:55
  Tania: And again, another realization is how often in the past, I'm better about it now, but.
• 42:01
  Tania: Where I would, I'm laughing 'cause I'd bring the performer mindset to even that and it'd be like, my feet are on the ground.
• 42:08
  Tania: Okay.
• 42:08
  Tania: Is this working yet?
• 42:09
  Tania: Like I'm evaluating the process as I'm trying to do it?
• 42:12
  Tania: And it really requires a reorientation entirely.
• 42:16
  Tania: And I would judge these practices as not productive and therefore a good use of time.
• 42:23
  Tania: And ironically, it is the opposite.
• 42:27
  Tania: It's only when we.
• 42:28
  Tania: Operate, from groundedness that we can be so much more productive or creative or whatever we wanna do next.
• 42:38
  Tania: Right.
• 42:38
  Tania: And anyway, I'm just taking a deep breath.
• 42:41
  Tania: That was beautiful.
• 42:42
  Tania: And for those who are listening, who would love to go deeper with you and your work, where can people begin that journey?
• 42:54
  Dawn: As you said, I did.
• 42:56
  Dawn: Finish, which was what?
• 42:59
  Dawn: Such a lovely expression.
• 43:02
  Dawn: And it was just certainly my heart space, my 44 day Somatic Companion.
• 43:08
  Dawn: And that is really rooted in, like I said, that's the mantra of creating safety in the body and that's softening and slowing down.
• 43:19
  Dawn: And it's not these elaborate somatic practices, it's just slow.
• 43:25
  Dawn: Simple what is happening now in my body and building from there.
• 43:32
  Dawn: Because until we really create that safety in the body, as you said, everything comes from the air, right?
• 43:42
  Dawn: It's not this trying to get somewhere.
• 43:46
  Dawn: It is coming into the space and.
• 43:53
  Dawn: Convening with what's already there and has always been there.
• 44:00
  Dawn: That's the truth.
• 44:01
  Dawn: I don't like all these fancy practices.
• 44:04
  Dawn: I'm not a fan.
• 44:05
  Dawn: I like very simple, slow and soft.
• 44:09
  Dawn: there's my somatic companion and I write a lot on Substack and I love that.
• 44:15
  Dawn: Um, and I have a lot of digital offerings that I'm gonna be.
• 44:20
  Dawn: Doing an audio meditations and I also do one-on-one somatic sessions and creative arts.
• 44:28
  Dawn: Um, yeah, that's what I do.
• 44:33
  Tania: That's beautiful.
• 44:33
  Tania: Well, we'll put links to all of that in the show notes, and I can speak from having, gotten a copy of that 44 day companion.
• 44:41
  Tania: It's just infused energetically even opening it, I suddenly was.
• 44:45
  Tania: Just feeling calmer.
• 44:47
  Tania: So, we'll definitely include all that information and, I've learned so much in this conversation and I felt so much in this conversation and I just want to thank you.
• 44:57
  Tania: Thank you for being here
• 44:59
  Dawn: Oh, Thank you.
• 45:02
  Tania: Thanks for listening to Banish The Lies.
• 45:04
  Tania: If today's episode resonated with you, take a moment to let it settle in.
• 45:08
  Tania: And maybe share it with a friend who could use it too.
• 45:11
  Tania: Lies, lose their power when we're brave enough to challenge them.
• 45:15
  Tania: I'm Tania Cervoni, and until next time, be kind to yourself.
• 45:20
  Tania: And remember, you're not broken, you're not alone, and you don't have to stay stuck.